Systems Engineering For Business Process Change

A guide to combining two powerful management techniques totransform any business organization into a masterpiece of businessefficiency. Lester Dean Thurow, Dean of MIT's Sloan School ofManagement, recently stated that benchmarking combined with processengineering will be the most important management technique of the1990s. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Gregory Watson describeshow top corporations worldwide have already successfullyimplemented that powerful cutting-edge technique--which he calls"business systems engineering"--to promote continuous improvement.More importantly, he clearly demonstrates how you can do the samein your organization. * Introduces business systems engineering, a dynamic new approachto rethinking and redesigning business processes to achievedramatic improvements in quality, cost, service, speed, andmore * Offers clear guidelines for using business systems engineeringtechniques to make your organization more dynamic, productive, andable to adapt to change in today's global marketplace * Incorporates key aspects of TQM, business process improvement,policy deployment, industrial engineering, teamwork, problemsolving, and information technology into one holistic system * Includes business systems engineering success stories, includingthose at Compaq, United Services Automobile Association andMotorola, as well as a survey of the effect of systems changeacross the global automobile industry

A very large proportion of commercial and industrial concerns in the UK find their business competitiveness dependent on huge quantities of already installed, legacy IT. Often the nature of their business is such that, to remain competitive, they have to be able to change their business processes. Sometimes the required change is radical and revolutionary, but more often the required change is incremental. For such incremental change, a major systems engineering problem arises. The cost and delay involved in changing the installed IT to meet the changed business requirements is much too high. In order to address this issue the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) set up, in 1996, a managed research programme entitled Systems Engineering for Business Process Change (SEBPC). I was appointed as co-ordinator of the programme. The overall aim of this new managed research programme was to release the full potential of IT as an enabler of business process change, and to overcome the disabling effects which the build-up of legacy systems has on such change. As such, this aim addressed a stated objective of the Information Technology and Computer Science (IT&CS) part of EPSRC to encourage research at a system level.

Systems Engineering for Business Process Change: New Directions is a collection of papers resulting from an EPSRC managed research programme set up to investigate the relationships between Legacy IT Systems and Business Processes. The papers contained in this volume report the results from the projects funded by the programme, which ran between 1997 and 2001. An earlier volume, published in 2000, reported interim results. Bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering and Business Schools, this book explores the problems experienced by IT-dependent businesses that have to implement changing business processes in the context of their investment in legacy systems. The book presents some of the solutions investigated through the collaborations set up within the research programme. Whether you are a researcher interested in the ideas that were generated by the research programme, or a user trying to understand the nature of the problems and their solutions, you cannot fail to be inspired by the writings contained in this volume.

The trusted handbook—now in a new edition This newly revised handbook presents a multifaceted view of systems engineering from process and systems management perspectives. It begins with a comprehensive introduction to the subject and provides a brief overview of the thirty-four chapters that follow. This introductory chapter is intended to serve as a "field guide" that indicates why, when, and how to use the material that follows in the handbook. Topical coverage includes: systems engineering life cycles and management; risk management; discovering system requirements; configuration management; cost management; total quality management; reliability, maintainability, and availability; concurrent engineering; standards in systems engineering; system architectures; systems design; systems integration; systematic measurements; human supervisory control; managing organizational and individual decision-making; systems reengineering; project planning; human systems integration; information technology and knowledge management; and more. The handbook is written and edited for systems engineers in industry and government, and to serve as a university reference handbook in systems engineering and management courses. By focusing on systems engineering processes and systems management, the editors have produced a long-lasting handbook that will make a difference in the design of systems of all types that are large in scale and/or scope.

This is the first practical guide to simulating business processes and predicting the impact of change. The book offers new tools for reducing the risks associated with strategic change. Pragmatic strategies are given for implementing simulation.